A Very Private Love
by NoraVonGikkingen
Summary: In the early 80s, all public schools of the Exterior Border State are threatened by 1stOrderSchools, a sprawling combine of private schools defeated once but making a significant comeback in the isolated world of the uneducated. Umi, a student in literature, thinks education can save her country. M. Hux, financial manager of the FOU, wants to give it back to a minority. And yet...


Hi! I didn't plan for that story at all, but I will publish it anyway :)

If anybody wants to be my beta and help me get rid of my grammar and/or expression mistakes (I'm french)... it would be of great help, thanks :3

This is a 80s AU based on the Sequels. Maybe a bit of Reylo as the story progresses, but mostly Hux/OC and Damerey.

* * *

"We're going out tonight, Umi!" exclaimed the girl who was slipping her coat on, beaming with enthusiasm, in front of her spellbound mirror.

The outerwear was of old but still heavy fake mink fur, with a leather zipper that no longer zipped; the pale green party dress underneath it looked cheap yet new and remarkably elegant; and finally, beneath a white garter belt and provocative fishnet stockings, a pair of black high-heeled pumps, a little worn out at the soles, imprisoned the lady's delicate feet. Sure, they hurt a lot when she wore them; but beauty is pain, and Rey was exquisitely beautiful, in her own low-cost way. As I said, the mirror was charmed: he was not the only one. The pretty uptown girl was in love with herself.

Umi, her roommate and best friend, was waiting for her in the sofa. She had not been asking for it, but she would go, and did not know how to take it. It was true, Rey had already dragged her to many parties organised by Jakku College since they had entered the campus the year before, but it was the first time students from this forgotten industrial city, who had a dubious reputation amongst other Exterior Border State sophomores, were invited by the First Order University to a party planned by both FOU and JC undergraduates, as if to announce eternal peace and a totally non-competitive friendship between the two schools. The Jakku FOU was just a tiny branch of the First Order Schools, a monster combine of… schools that had begun infiltrating, after buying most of the old tired universities of the Interior Border State and reshaping them as their own, the Exterior Border State's fragile and poor educational system. Jakku had not been touched by the FOU plague for a long time, as though its decrepit premises and rough polluted climate would always keep all these investments at bay. Yet they had settled a few months ago, like criminals hiding themselves by running an alluring business, in the purpose of destroying every free institute they had at hand and give back education to a prosperous minority. And, in Jakku, as no one had ever seen the only decent institute they had pit its wits against a malevolent private school, this quarrel didn't pass unnoticed.

Umi gazed at Rey, who was carrying out the final strokes to her hair, marvelling at her almost natural beauty. Her hazel eyes were lit up by a light shade of purple, her mouth stayed wide open on white teeth that seemed to laugh at her reflection, and her dark flowing mane was tied in in three almost identical messy buns tracing a perfect curve from the top of her head to her white neck. Umi looked a bit like her; she had the same hair and eyes, but a larger face and slightly pulpier rosy lips. Despite these differences in their features, they were identically sweet, charming young women, untouched by passions specific to their blooming age; to tell the truth, none of them had ever known wild love, or shared their bed, or discovered the repellent joys of life as a couple. They had greedily devoted all their time and interests to their cosy, antisocial friendship, until Rey had started running after the shadow of a relationship with Poe Dameron, a student in psychology and the Captain of the Jakku football team. To Umi, it did not really count. "They don't even kiss properly and Poe holds her hand like a four-year-old." thought her while lacing her leather boots. "I'm sure his lips never ventured lower than her chin. But I'm fascinated by the way he looks at her… if only a man could be that tender to me!"

Rey's voice cut her off. "You coming, Umi?" she asked, and tried to improve her speaking. "Poe is waiting for us."

Out of the building, three floors down, Poe Dameron was desperately hanging around. He wore a black suit and brown trousers sewn in an old tweed fabric. When the women showed up, his lips sketched a slight smile of entwined relief and mad tenderness, and when he caught sight of Rey's face he was unsure whether to demonstrate his love by running into her arms or hiding it once more. He took a timid step towards the divine creature, reminded her that they were dating by kissing the corner of her glossy mouth, then advanced to meet Umi, and drew her into a friendly hug.

They had known each other for four months, well, since Rey had encountered Poe at the train station. It was a cold morning of October; Umi pictured it without really remembering it; she and her roommate were going on a trip to the Interior Border State with their athletics club. Poe, for his part, had driven one of their friends of the athletics club, Finn, from Jakku College to the station as the war refugee had no car, no home of his own, and practically no family. Poe's mother had rescued him on the old gate that linked the two States when poor Finn was still a bony and defenceless orphan who seemed to come from nowhere in this world. Poe had become his brother more than a mere friend, and they were sometimes so close that one could mistakenly expect them to be lovers – but not in Jakku, for the concept of a homosexual community was somewhat unknown and far-fetched to its prejudiced and behind-the-time inhabitants.

More seriously, coming back to the athletics trip, Rey and Umi had learnt from Finn that Poe was so polyvalent he could manage being part of two separate sports clubs of Jakku college at a time, and that he was, as a matter of fact, one of the lucky undergraduates that had been selected to take that one-week trip to the surrounding countryside of Aldeeran. On the train, the four fellow students had had a few hours to get to know each other; to Umi and Rey, it had been a complex exercise, almost an adventure, as they had no other friends in Jakku than themselves and were not accustomed to further human contact: it took two hours for the young women to accept the ambient feeling of laid-back camaraderie that all the other undergraduates had bravely begun to impose to the whole wagon in humour and excitement. "Like warm chocolate spread on toasted bread" Umi thought. "Melting and agreeable once you've tried it."

And now, they were close friends, always depending on each other in the ordinary life, a team. Finn could not enjoy the party; he was working as a waiter in a pizzeria on week days, including Friday evenings which were the most profitable evenings to the house but also the days on which Finn was utterly alone from nine to ten and had to cope with all the customers' desires.

"Maybe" Umi said as the three of them were getting into the car, "maybe we could pay a short visit to Finn at his workplace when we leave the party. We said we would go at ten before everybody gets really drunk and irresponsible."

Poe nodded, his hands already placed on the wheel, but added: "Depends if we meet friends, or make new ones, or if I have a fight with a squiffy FOU student – these guys are easily high before ten - and beat him. Alcohol is normally forbidden at undergraduate parties, but, well… if the FOU members feel the need to drink a little, they will certainly bring gin and liquor in sufficient quantity."

There was a silence. None of them was prepared to welcome any FOU members for the first time on their territory: they were emotionless, seductive, overconfident, and drank so much that some said there was not a single drop of blood in their veins remaining sober after a seven hour student night. Some of their guys got a bit horny too, under their grave and conceited coldness; at least it was what Umi had been told by her elder sister since she worked as a secretary for the FOU's financial manager Armitage Hux. Umi had been quickly comforted about him. "Don't run away if you meet him, sis', this one's fine; he is so serious with his female relations that one could believe he's gay" Mina had told her one day. "Well, maybe he is, but it would be a sad, sad blow… the girls are fond of him at the office. I think it's them who scare him."

"So" Poe started as they were stuck in the heavy seven PM car traffic. "Are you two acquainted with any of the FOU members?"

Umi was looking at the crowd of people hurrying home after a busy day spent assembling electronic devices at the factory, selling cheap clothes, or answering faxes for the luckiest of them. Tomorrow would be their day off – for many of them – and yet they would waste their precious time purchasing new furniture, new underwear, new unnecessary items they manufactured themselves every hour of their lives, with the very little money they could spare for their pleasure… instead of relaxing in the covers, or cuddling with a friend, a man, a cat, or watching a soap opera while knitting a new scarf or an unwearable Christmas pullover. "Why are people so dependable on the things they kill themselves in crafting? Why do they act as if they only had a wallet in their heads? It's because they don't study enough. They don't mind being tied to society like they are… but they would if they had the chance to know." She thought, and a pale, salty tear fell from her city light-blinded eye.

"I dunno any of them" Rey answered finally. "but maybe Umi has made some FOU friends since she's a member of a reading club which only attracts this kind of people."

Again, lost in her deepest thoughts, Umi was hit by a blurred question that was obviously mentioning her name. She took some time to think – for she had been ignominiously interrupted and had only heard the last part of Rey's sentence – inhaled briefly and articulated:

"The reading club is 99% old ladies and 1% young people, that is to say only me. I don't know any of them personally, though I have tried – these retired harpies have to be so proud and disrespectful when it comes to our generation! They say we kinda messed up our lives compared to theirs: we should toil in the factories or in the fields, be married to some faithless and abusive man, and already bear our first child. But what is the interest in being married and try to love the same old guy when you can have truer feelings in company of different people who will express their inclination in different ways yet with the same intensity? Why work if you have only two hours left in the evening to cultivate yourself, and only six hours of restless sleep to try and dream avidly as if you were dying from fantasy-starving? Why forget oneself? Why –"

"OK, Umi, we didn't really need that bit…" interrupted Rey. "But you know how "real" grown-ups see things. Even our mums keep telling us that." Her slang was resurfacing. "They're still dreaming of the day we'll show them the ring around our finger and the standard house with the car and the dog and everything." She paused, and felt shame; for a sociology student, she knew that her language sounded coarse, unrefined, her vocabulary undernourished. Yet it made what she was explaining more than clear, even to the biggest fool in the world. "It is because they didn't grow along with the same comfort. Now there is decent shelter, work for a lot of people, reasonable wages, and science progresses every day to keep our bodies sane and feed our brains, and they want the best of all this for us: they're just mums, they care about us like our grandmothers before them. After all, we can't blame them for being mothers. We rely on them every minute of our lives, unconsciously."

She then cast a tender glance at a young waitress of the X-Wing Café she knew cross the street with her little girl to enter a supermarket and buy dinner. Her heart throbbed when Poe abruptly accelerated after a stop at a red fire; she held out her hand to wave at them but they were rapidly out of her sight, devoured by prismatic headlight flashes and long scraps of sandy fog. After letting this soothing silence linger a bit in the car, Poe broke in:

"We were talking about Uni. I know a guy called Armitage Hux" said he.

"My sister knows him, but I'm not informed on who he really is, except that he's a heartless financial manager." Murmured Umi, quite startled.

"I hope she does not underestimate him as I did when we met. He owns the FOU mobile football club, the Finalizer, and they beat us the last time we got to play against their team. But they've got a great coach, Professor Phasma. She's incredibly effective in their training."

"Cool a girl coaches a male team," said Rey candidly. "Very innovative."

"Well, that Hux is the most arrogant man I've met in a long time. But he's also very intimidating. And damn attractive to ladies."

"Knew that from Mina." echoed Umi.

"Like his colleague, Kylo Ren…"

"Who is he? Asked she, drawing hearts and flowers on the car pane that was covered with the mist of her breathing.

"A dangerous guy. The grandson of the FOU's first administrative manager – well, it wasn't called FOU at the time, but it had quite the same influence; something like Empire Schools if I remember rightly. That man was a true mastermind, but he was defeated by his son, who directed free institutes in both the Interior and Exterior States and succeeded in boycotting the whole combine. That's what I was told."

"I didn't know that story," exclaimed Rey as they were approaching the campus. "It's fascinating. I knew the situation was tense, but these characters remained very abstract to me. Mum didn't talk much about it; you know, she didn't go further than elementary school. The educational system was so weak in these days..."/p  
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 100%;""Anybody mind if the hero's still around?" Umi asked, interested.

"Disappeared - Woosh! Like a flash. I don't know much about his situation. They say he retired when he saw his mission was complete. He was really young then. I wonder where he is now. Look, we reached the parking lot."

Jakku College consisted of three greying buildings, with imposing wrinkled façades and dark window panes that looked over you in the sunset like the blind and glassy red eyes of an old man. Timeworn, horridly disarticulated chimneys, attached to their chimeric decaying bodies, rose before the students as black broken spines; even the park and the football pitch, dry and neglected, looked dead and hopelessly unrefined. When Umi got out and a bunch of ladies in costly apparel, probably FOU students or employees, that spread a rich but vagrant fragrance smelling of roses and gold coins, overtook her, she wisely concluded for herself: "We don't stand a chance."

Then she noticed that man, alone on the sand path leading to the buildings, standing tall in the setting sun, holding an organiser close to his heart. With his gentleman clothes and posture, his red hair made scarlet by the outlandish twilight, his hands wrapped around his workbook, he appeared as a romantic poet to her who was so starry-eyed. She thought him to be sympathetic. Affectionate. Wild. The first error she made was to be aroused by this uplifting hallucination.

The second was to step towards it to establish contact.


End file.
